Your Brain is to Blame

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Your Brain is to Blame

See what happens when we trick our brains to peer into the future—and get better acquainted with our future selves.

This content is made possible by Prudential; it is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Slate’s editorial staff.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty about our future selves,” says Adam Alter, professor of marketing at NYU. When we contemplate the days to come, we see someone “far murkier and more abstract than our very real, tangible, concrete present selves.” Our future selves, in other words, are strangers—and it’s much harder to plan for a stranger than to plan for yourself. “Because Americans privilege their wellbeing today over the wellbeing of their future selves,” Alter notes, “they save far too little for retirement. Your future self will be forced to deal with the consequences.” It doesn’t have to be that way.

See what happens when we trick our brains to peer into the future—and get better acquainted with our future selves.